Doctor Sax - Jack Kerouac [10]
SMILEY BULL BALLOON (out of the mouth like a cigar and a yellow tooth): Say Raymond-O, don’t you think this romance has gone far enough?
SAX: Why do you say that Pops? (Neatly rubbing chalk to cue as 8-ball plunks into corner pocket in the mill.) Anything you say Pops.
BULL: Why (bending over the table to take a shot as Sax protests and everybody roars) m’boy it sometimes occurs to me, not that I haven’t been to see the doctor lately (grunting to take a shot with cue)—the perfect disposition for your well-known little ten dollar ass is over by the table benches there with the Pepsi-Cola box and farmitures, whilst I becalm myself in a dull weed (puffing cee-gar) and aim this rutabaga stick at the proper ball–white—for old yellow number one–
SAX: But I sank the 8-ball!—you can’t shoot now!
OLD BULL: Son (patting the flask of Old Granddad in his backpocket with no deprecatory gesture) the law of averages, or the law of supply and demand, says the 8-ball was a goddamn Albino 8-bawl (removing it from pocket and spotting it and lining up white cueball with a flick of his forefinger to a speck on the green beside it, simultaneously letting out a loud fart heard by everybody in the poolhall and some at the bar, precipitating various reactions of disgust and wild cheer, as the Proprietor, Joe Boss, throws a wadded paper at Old Bull Balloon’s ass, and Old Bull, position established, whips out a bottle to the light (said flask) and addresses it a short speech before taking a shot–to the effect that alcohol has too much gasoline in it but by God the old Hampshire car can go! promptly thereafter re-pocketing it and bending, neatly and briskly, with amazing sudden agility, neat and dextrous, fingertip control of his cue-stick, good balance, stance, the forefingers all arranged on the table to hold the cue just so high, just right, pow, the old man pots the yellow one-ball into the slot, plock, and everybody settles down from the humor to see a good game of rotation between two good players–and though the laffs and yaks continue into the night, Old Bull Balloon and Doctor Sax never rest, you can’t die without heroes to look after).
This was the Butte background of Doctor Sax–in Butte Raymond the miner–a miner indeed!—he searched the mine and ore-source of the Great World Snake.
He looked all over for herbs that he knew someday he would perfect into an alchemic-almost poison art that could cast out a certain hypnotic and telepathic light that would make the Snake drop dead … a terrible weapon for some old hateful bitch, people would be dropping dead all over the streets… Sax figures to blow his powder poof! for the Snake–the Snake ’ll see the light–Sax will wish it dead, the Snake will die from just seeing the telepathic light … the only way to transmit messages to a Snake, where it will understand what you “really” mean … beware, Doctor Sax. But no,—he himself screams “Palalakonuh beware!” in his noonday fits in the woods with his afterdinner peps darting his black slouchcape like ink in the sun, diving under his trapdoor like a fiend … “Palala-konuh beware!” is written on his wall. In the afternoon he naps … Palalakonuh is merely the Aztec or Toltec name (or possibly Chihuahuan in origin) for the World Sun Snake of the ancient Indians of North America (who probably trekked from Tibet before they knew they had Tibetan backgrounds or North American foregrounds spreading huge in the World Around) (Doctor Sax had cried “Oh Northern Heroes Trekking from Mongolian Glooms & Bare Korean Thumbs to the Mango Paradises of the New World South, what bleak mornings did you see over the stone humps of Sierra Nueva Tierra as you bowled in a heavy wind with posts, strapped and gear to the night camp to the clanking Prokofiev music of Indian Antiquity in the Howling Void!”)
Sax worked on